Drone Deliveries By Google Affiliate 'Wing Aviation' Got Federal Approval

Ravi Adwani - May 01, 2019

Wing Aviation - a Google affiliate has received federal approval for commercial drone deliveries. The company will operate in Virginia later on in 2019.

Wing Aviation - Google affiliate has officially got federal approval to use drones for commercial deliveries. This is the first company to receive any type of certification for deliveries by drone.

The approval lets Wing operate such flights in Virginia later into 2019. On Tuesday, the FAA approved all safety requirements from the agency. This is because they took part in Virginia’ pilot program, which involved a few thousands of flights across the past years in Australia. With such approval, local businesses can now use delivery services from home to home across the U.S.

Future plans for Wing Aviation

For Wing Aviation, they didn’t mention any specific businesses to participate in such deliveries. They decided to spend the next few months demonstrating the technology to the people. Also, they would be answering questions from residents of Virginia, Christiansburg, and Blacksburg in specific.

In order to get FAA certification, Wing Aviation had to prove their drone deliveries service is superior to those made by cars. In total, the company made over 70,000 flights and over 3,000 deliveries. All of them to test the service, serving residents of Australia.

Wing Aviation believed that electric drones delivery service can bring upon tons of benefits for people. It can deliver food and medicine much faster than usual and help consumers getting around more quickly. Additionally, drone deliveries can reduce emissions and traffic significantly.

Drones in the U.S.

In the U.S, we have seen drones in many different industries like pipelines, utilities, and agriculture. However, obstacles were there due to federal regulations didn’t allow flights on top of the crowds and those beyond the operator’s sight or those without FAA’ waiver.

Approximately, 110,000 commercial drones have been operating in the U.S. Guess what, it would rise to around 450,000 within 2022.

Amazon is now working on drone deliveries, being a hot topic for CEO Jeff Bezos. Also, other delivery companies like DHL and UPS are also testing the service.